To Your Health
by Hel-Lokisdotter
Summary: Regulus' final moments. Thought-tracking, gen, one-shot.


**A/N:** Like _Post Mortem_, this draws heavily on the backstory established for Regulus in Mayhem and Magic, a Marauder's Era RP I play in and mod for. I don't think it ever actively disagrees with canon, but if you notice any minor discrepancies or anything, that's why, okay?  
And, also like _Post Mortem_, this is dedicated to Spider, who is concentrated awesome and helped me sort out the ending a bit.  
Enjoy!

**To Your Health**

It was cold in the cave, but he didn't feel it. There were more important things on his mind.

"Show me," he ordered quietly, his clipped voice nonetheless echoing through the darkness, and lifted his wand, murmuring "_Lumos_," as he did so.

The house-elf nodded, darting forwards over the wet, slippery rocks. His feet sliding and his robes catching around his legs, Regulus followed, wand held high to illuminate the cavern. It wasn't the cave he was heading for – this cave was smaller, and, more importantly, without the lake or the island the young man had come here in search of. But he could only trust the house-elf to lead him to the right place, and he did; what reason had he not to? Of the whole world, Kreacher was the only one he could trust with the knowledge of this expedition, and the only one who could show him the way. Even Uncle Cygnus, who Regulus had trusted more than anyone while growing up, had to be kept in the dark.

Regulus hated it. Hated the deception, hated the secrecy, but most of all, hated the lies. Lies were not his forte, not by any means – he hated the very idea of them. And yet, he had lied for weeks now, in body and mind – had even lied to the Dark Lord himself, and had never once been find out. In a perverse way, that gave him satisfaction, and he hated himself for being proud of dishonour.

And yet, what choice did he have? He had seen, first-hand, the wholesale slaughter of not only Muggles, but of _wizards_, witches and wizards who had been at Hogwarts with him, others who he had even, in some cases, looked up to. The Dark Lord was not fighting for what was just and right. He was not fighting to reinstate the correct order of things, as Regulus was; he was not fighting for the recognition of the old wizarding families and the continuation of a noble history, as Regulus had believed him to be; he was fighting for the sake of fighting, for power, and for the violence and the chaos which Regulus abhorred. How could a noble soul stand by and allow such wholesale, unmitigated destruction to continue? It was not what he had expected, and, more to the point, it was not _right_.

And then there was Kreacher. Kreacher the old house-elf, who Regulus had grown up with and had a particular fondness for; Kreacher who had never done anyone harm; Kreacher who the Dark Lord had left to die here, and who _would_ have died here had it not been for luck.

What else could he do, then, but come here? He had done the research, in shadowy corners where nobody saw him, leafing through the darkest of the books in the ancestral libraries, making no notes lest they be seen, storing everything he had learnt in the complex maze of his mind. He was certain of the importance of the prize he sought – and equally certain that to destroy it would be to do right.

If he had been Sirius, he would not have come alone. But he was not Sirius, despite the blood they shared and the similarity of their looks; he was Regulus Arcturus, heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, and he would not abase himself to those fools at the Ministry. Nor would they believe him if he did; he was, after all, a Death Eater, and who would honestly believe that a follower of the Dark Lord would turn so dramatically against him, rather than the simpler explanation that it was a trick?

He suspected Sirius might have believed him, nonetheless; however low the Gryffindor's opinion of him might be, however much Sirius might mistake subtlety for cowardice – they had grown up together, and Sirius knew well enough his aversion to lying. But his pride rebelled against even the idea of crawling for help to somebody who had, by choice, abandoned the Black family and all that they stood for. So who was there to turn to? Regulus was on his own, an enemy to both sides now and without a friend to turn to for help. But there were more important things than friendship.

Kreacher had come to a stop now, by an otherwise unremarkable patch of the rough stone wall. Regulus swallowed. _This is where it truly begins,_ he thought, _this is the point of no return,_ although he knew inside that it had begun a long time ago, and that as soon as it had begun, he had been incapable of turning back.

He knew what he had to do; he had made sure long before leaving that he knew all he could about this place. Handing Kreacher his lit wand, he knelt down to get the best light, and pulled out a short knife he had had Kreacher take from the kitchens. An ignoble tool for the purpose, he felt, but it would not be missed and it was ubiquitous enough that it would not be tracked if he was forced to leave it behind for whatever reason. Tightening his jaw – he was not afraid of pain, nobody who had spent his childhood with Bellatrix and Sirius could be afraid of pain, but he was afraid of what might lie beyond the door – he brought the knife down in a swift, decisive motion, leaving a long incision along his left palm.

The pain was dull, almost nonexistent; the knife was a sharp one. The blood, however, began to well immediately, marring his white skin with a line of darkness, which glittered obscenely as he took his wand back from Kreacher. When he smeared it across the rough stone, however, that was when the pain came; the rock worried at the loose edges of his skin, drawing more blood from the shallow cut, and widened the neat incision to something ragged and ugly. He barely even noticed; all his attention was on what lay through the door which was beginning to slide open.

He didn't bother to heal the cut – if he made it out alive, he would do so then, and if not, well, what difference would it make? Instead, he simply wiped it absent-mindedly on his robes, slipping through the door as soon as it opened wide enough to admit his slim form, and headed towards the edge of the lake.

It was startlingly beautiful, in its own way. The still water looked like glass; no water was naturally that flat, Regulus thought, and chewed nervously on his thumbnail. It was dangerous. That was all he knew. No amount of cajoling, not even the direct order to tell, had managed to pry more than that from Kreacher, and Regulus had ceased to push for it, well aware that the house-elf had almost died, and that his reluctance to speak of it was only natural.

Even without Kreacher's testimony, though, he could easily have told that it was dangerous. The water was too still, too flat. Nothing dripped into it, nothing moved in it but his own reflection. Across the black water, the dim, greenish glow of the island remained constant. Almost hypnotised, Regulus moved closer, climbing over the dry stone until he was only inches from where the still water touched the shore. Dangerous, yes, but beautiful.

And then his eye was drawn to a white shape, floating just under the surface of the water a few yards from the shore. Even before he looked at it full-on, he knew what it was: behind him, Kreacher gave a little moue of fright, starting back. Swiftly, Regulus darted out his free hand to grab the elf's shoulder, never taking his grey eyes off the corpse floating in the magically flat water.

"You mentioned a boat, Kreacher," he said quietly, his voice level and firm. "Where is it?"

Bulbous eyes wider than ever in the wandlight, Kreacher shook his head. "Kreacher doesn't know," he said, almost inaudibly. "Kreacher is sorry, young master. Kreacher will…"

"Do nothing," Regulus interrupted, lips pressed together tightly. "_Nox_." The light went out suddenly, leaving him blinking away the afterimages. For a moment, he stood there, perfectly still, waiting until all he could see in the darkness was the dim light of the island, then he turned away again, climbing over rocks he couldn't see, always keeping the remembered water well to his left.

"It glows, you said?" he asked after a moment, negotiating a particularly difficult stub of rock and dashing his shin against it in the process. He couldn't see Kreacher nod, but he knew that it was true; Regulus Black had a particularly well-trained memory. Narrowing his eyes, he perched on the rock and scanned the dark water.

_There_! Blinking to make sure that it wasn't a figment of his imagination, he put his hand on Kreacher's shoulder again. "Down there," he said in a hushed tone, nodding at the glowing boat just under the surface of the water. "Is that it?"

"Kreacher… thinks so," Kreacher said after a long moment, and Regulus nodded in the darkness.

"Keep your eyes on that spot, Kreacher," he advised, letting go of the elf's shoulder, and raised his wand again. "_Lumos_."

Despite his worries, when the light filled the cavern again, making him blink, he could still see the shape of the boat under the water, now he knew where to look. Wordlessly, wand held high, he started back towards the water, casting around for something, anything, to fetch the boat with.

In the end, he almost tripped over the chain, only just catching his wand before it rolled away into the water. Passing it to Kreacher again, so that he would still have light, he bent down to grasp the chain in both hands, giving it an experimental tug. The boat moved. He pulled again, more purposefully, hand over aching, bleeding hand. He wasn't strong, not like Sirius was strong, but he was no weakling, either; slowly, jerkily, the boat moved towards them, drawn by the chain he couldn't see. "Keep a close eye on the water," he cautioned Kreacher, without looking up.

The house-elf nodded, tearing his attention away from the smears of Regulus' blood left on his shoulder and looking up at the still, dark water with fear in his huge eyes.

Hauling the boat up close to the shore, Regulus let go of the chain, reaching over to grab the side of the boat and draw it closer still. "Get in, Kreacher," he ordered the elf quietly, as the boat crunched onto the rocks. "Carefully." Taking his wand back, he lifted it high so he could see and avoid the water as he climbed aboard, closely followed by the wide-eyed house-elf. "Now, how do we…?"

His question was answered for him as the boat began, painfully slowly, to move across the lake of its own accord. Pushing his lips together, he glanced at Kreacher, who was rocking to and fro, looking hideously frightened, then back at the slowly approaching glow of the island. It seemed to take an age before, finally, the boat came gently to rest against the stones of the island, allowing the tall Death Eater to step ashore, the house-elf following closely behind him.

Extinguishing the wandlight – he didn't need it in the pale light of the island's own glow, and he preferred to have his wand ready for use in a place like this – Regulus stepped carefully over the rocks towards the source of the light. "This is it?" he asked curtly, glancing back at Kreacher. The elf nodded.

Taking a few more steps, which brought him within reach of the basin, Regulus looked at Kreacher again, and dug in his pocket, pulling out his chess set. Uncle Cygnus had given it to him years ago, before he even started Hogwarts; it was silver, about a span wide, and Regulus' most treasured possession. And now Uncle Cygnus was wasting away, bedbound and surrounded by his family, and Regulus couldn't help but be upset to have left so abruptly.

"You must take this back," he told Kreacher, holding out the little chess set. "Uncle Cygnus will never forgive me if I let anything happen to it. So, if I don't make out alive, then I order you to return this to Uncle Cygnus, and tell him I'm sorry I never got to play a winning game against him. And, Kreacher?" The house-elf looked up, eyes wider than ever, and Regulus sighed. "If it looks as though I am in danger, then let me be in danger. If you have to let me die, then let me die. One of us has to leave this place alive, with the locket, after all."

Kreacher hesitated, and Regulus' lips drew tightly together.

"That's a direct order, Kreacher," he said flatly. "And don't drink any of the potion, either, no matter what it does to me. You've lived through that once, and once is more than enough. Force it down my throat if you must, but _do not drink it_. Am I understood?"

After a long moment, Kreacher nodded. Regulus nodded back, running his fingers through his cropped black hair, and looked down at the dimly glowing potion. "It has to be drunk," he said flatly, mostly to himself, and sighed, looking back at the elf again. "Do not tell Mother of this," he said quietly, "nor Father. And certainly not Bella or Cissa. If there is even the smallest chance that word will reach the Dark Lord through them, you must not tell them I was here. In fact… no. You must tell nobody in the family. Nobody at all. Am I understood?"

Again, Kreacher nodded reluctantly.

"Good." Regulus turned back to the basin, conjuring a goblet with a flick of his wand, and plucked it out of the air. His tight jaw and bobbing Adam's apple the only sign of the sudden fear gnawing at his heart, he bent slightly from the waist, filling the goblet to the brim, then straightened up, raising his chin. The steady glow of the liquid, shimmering as he lifted the gobletful, lit his angular, handsome face with leaping shadows, making him look almost skeletal, and turned his alabaster-white skin to a sickly green. He looked at once very old and very, very young.

Swallowing hard, he lifted the goblet to eye level, nodding to empty air.

"Here's to the Dark Lo… to Voldemort," he said aloud, his voice echoing around the cavern. "Here's to Bella, and Lucius, and Snape, and to Death Eaters everywhere. Here's to your health." With that, before he could change his mind, he gulped down the entire contents of the goblet without pausing for breath.

It didn't hurt. Not immediately. His first thought was that it felt like swallowing ice, ice that filled all his veins and froze his muscles, but he could deal easily enough with that. He could deal with _all_ of this. He didn't care how bad it was or how much it might hurt later.

_Drink it up_, he thought, and the voice in his head was Sirius', getting him to drink Skele-Gro after the incident with the stairs when he was six. _Drink it all up, Reg. I know it stinks, but you have to drink it all up_.

Grinding his teeth together, he refilled the goblet. It took him two tries to get it all down this time, and when it was done, he sagged against the basin, his hands shaking as he dipped it again. _Now_ there was pain, pain worse than _crucio_ if only because there was no end to it in sight – but he could deal with _crucio_, and had done in the past, and come through it, and the pain itself wasn't so bad, but the _memories_ it brought with it, oh, Merlin, the _memories…_

He wasn't sure if it was the pain, or some other effect of the potion, but all of a sudden he was six again, six and still the subject of Bellatrix's curses because Sirius was the heir and so untouchable, and Regulus was just some little brat, the back-up. And, although he was still acutely conscious of the cold stone under his left hand and the burning cold of the potion as he went on drinking, at the same time, he was curled up against the wall in Grimmauld Place, shaking and crying and screaming as Bella's Cruciatus ripped through him. _The eyes… all the eyes…_ Staring at him, watching his humiliation, his breakdown, and none of them moving forwards to help him, and…

_It's just a memory!_ he yelled at himself, forcing it to the back of his mind, and became aware that he was shaking like a leaf, and that Kreacher was staring at him, large eyes wide with concern.

"The water," he said levelly, bringing his body back under control. It was difficult; his legs felt like wet rubber, and he wanted nothing more than to curl up and forget the war, forget the locket, forget everything. But he was Regulus Arcturus Black, and he was strong. He _had_ to be strong. "Watch the water, Kreacher. Not me. Not unless I call you." Without looking at the house-elf again – why would he want to? – he dipped the goblet again, gulping it down. Pain racked him, but he would be strong. He would not let this defeat him.

_Drink it up, Reg. Every drop._

The memories were coming thick and fast now, his entire body cramping and screaming with pain; he was six again, crumpled at the bottom of the stairs with Cygnus staring down at him and Bellatrix triumphant at the top; he was ten, watching his parents yell and scream at one another as the news came of Sirius' Sorting; he was fourteen and crouched in the corner of the ballroom with his eyes closed as his family jeered and hurled curses after a fleeing Sirius; he was sixteen and receiving his Mark, humiliated and bruised by the initation rituals…

Clenching his jaw, he choked down another gobletful. They were memories. Just memories. They were in the _past_, and he never had to live through them again. Not if he didn't let himself believe in them.

Pausing, he slumped against the edge of the basin, empty goblet in hand. Every muscle in him rebelled against refilling the goblet, and he was so, so thirsty. He glanced over at the still, dangerous dark water, tempted for a moment, then forced his eyes away and back to the hateful potion – poison, rather, for that was all it really was. The basin was perhaps half-empty; progress, at least, although he shuddered at the thought of forcing so much down.

But force it down he did. Somehow, every muscle in his body shaking, keeping himself upright by sheer will alone, he forced down mouthful after mouthful, goblet after goblet, until only the dregs remained in the basin.

_Every last drop, Reggie. Come on, you have to_.

_You have to_.

He could probably have reached the locket as it was – there was perhaps half a glass left in the basin, and the locket was almost fully exposed – but it wouldn't have been _right_, somehow.

_Every. Last. Drop._

Swallowing hard – his throat felt raw and painful, as if it had been half scraped away – he dipped the goblet one last time, its rim scraping against the bottom of the basin. His hand was shaking so much that he almost dropped the cup again, but he managed to hold it steady enough to bring it to his lips without spilling any. To tilt it, opening his mouth just a little so that the burning, freezing, _painful_ liquid could dribble into his mouth and down his throat. He hacked, coughed… swallowed.

It was done.

Casting the goblet aside, where it clattered onto the stones of the island, he forced back the pain racking him from head to toe, reaching out to rake the locket onto the cut on his palm.

"Kreacher…" he croaked, his voice shaking and cracking as though some malign force had wrested control of it. The house-elf was at his side immediately, moving to prop him up, but Regulus shook him irritably away. "I'm fine!" he lied. "Take… the locket. Take it." His breathing harsh and ragged, he pushed the horcrux into Kreacher's hands, falling forwards against the basin again. The thirst was all-consuming; the pain all-encompassing. Digging in his robes, he plucked out the replacement locket, a close replica he had made from Kreacher's description, which contained what might very well be the last thing anyone else saw of him. With the thirst and the pain and the difficulty of breathing, that seemed more and more likely by the second.

He opened his mouth again, lips trembling, as if he was about to say something, then shook his head sharply and dropped the replacement locket unceremoniously into the empty basin. "Water," he groaned, looking wildly around, his chest heaving. "I need water…" He started towards the water's edge, collapsing onto all fours almost as soon as he left the support of the basin.

Then Kreacher was at his side again, pulling him towards the boat. "The boat," he whispered, tugging at Regulus' arm. "The young master must get to the boat, he must, before _they_ come!"

"Who?" Regulus asked. Everything seemed dim, unimportant, except for the burning thirst.

"The dead." Kreacher shuddered, hauling the young Death Eater closer towards the boat. "The _dead_!"

Regulus shook his head, pulling away, and crawled a little closer to the water. He didn't care about the dead, or the living. He didn't even care about the Dark Lord any more. He'd done what he'd come to do, and now it was over. All he cared about was getting rid of that hideous, agonising _thirst_.

Kreacher still tugging at his robes and pleading, _begging_ him not to touch the water, he bent his face down until it almost touched the surface. His reflection stood clear in the darkness, in the dim light of the nearby boat and the brightening light of the basin behind him as it refilled; his face looked almost skeletal in the darkness, greenish and pallid, and indescribably pain-filled. He looked more like Sirius than ever, despite his short-cropped hair and sticking-out ears; he looked just as Sirius must have done when the curses struck him as he fled.

Taking a long, shuddering breath, he bent his head still lower, blood thundering in his ears, and dipped his hands into the water, gulping it down as though it were an antidote to the pain rampaging through every limb. It was cold and tasted of death, but still better than the potion that had come before it, and he was still gulping it down, his head so close that his dangling hair touched the still black surface of the water, when the first hand grabbed his wrist.

With the last of his strength, he wrenched himself away, the thirst washed away by the desperate, primal need to stay alive, but there were more clinging to him already, cold, dead hands, and then cold, dead faces, and then the armies of the dead were rising and leaping and lunging, making the water roil and foam, and Regulus reached for his wand, forcing away the hands that snatched at his arms, and his wand wasn't there.

He turned his head, despair rising up in him.

There it was, only a few feet from his flailing arms, but it might as well have been a thousand miles. The inferi – that was what they were, he thought foggily, inferi, _the dead_ – were piling onto him, dragging him further away, and then they were reaching for Kreacher, and Regulus couldn't let that happen. Not when Kreacher had the locket.

"Go!" he shouted, his voice trailing to a thin, desperate thread. "Take it! Kreacher, I _order_ you to leave! Destroy it! And tell…" He fought on for a moment, clinging to the rocks with his rapidly failing strength, robes heavy with water, spidery hands clenched all around him. "Tell Uncle Cygnus… I'm sorry! And tell Mother and Father…"

Then he was cut off as water filled his mouth and closed over his head, and there were only the ripples to show that there had been a boy there at all.


End file.
